U.S. Sees FIFA as Victim and Its Leaders as Wrongdoers

When the United States announced criminal charges against longtime leaders of world soccer in May, its message was clear: FIFA, the international organization governing the sport, was riddled with corruption. FIFA bolstered that notion Thursday, suspending its most powerful executives who were not charged by the United States amid internal ethics investigations.

But the continuing federal case, in which neither FIFA nor the two regional soccer confederations central to the allegations are being prosecuted, has sent another, subtler message: The United States considers FIFA and its confederations victims.

In investigations against banks like BNP Paribas and carmakers like General Motors, the Justice Department has been criticized for criminally charging corporations but not the people behind them. The FIFA case is an unlikely reversal of that as the United States is prosecuting two generations of officials for widespread corruption in organizations it has offered to help rehabilitate.

Announcing the case in May, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch called Concacaf, the confederation based in Miami which oversees soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, “plainly an organization in crisis,” adding: “We stand ready to work with them to reform their practices.”

The indictment unsealed that day painted FIFA as a hijacked party and assigned responsibility to its people. “The defendants,” it said of the 14 men charged — nine of them FIFA officials — “corrupted the enterprise.”

In framing organized soccer as the victim, overtaken by criminals and hurt by decades of bribery and kickback schemes, the United States has perhaps sought to soften the sting of its international crackdown, which some have called an overreach of power. It has positioned itself as more a savior of soccer than a punitive policeman — and it has given FIFA a narrative it is eager to advance amid its disgrace.

“It is, once again, unfortunately, FIFA suffering under these circumstances,” the organization’s communications director said at a news conference after the case was announced, describing the charges as good for FIFA. “FIFA is the damaged party.”

Image

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced charges against FIFA officials at a news conference in May.CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

But FIFA is not a typical victim. A nonprofit with over $1.5 billion in cash reserves, it hired top white-collar defense lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. The firm presented in July to the leadership of FIFA at its gated, 11-acre headquarters in Zurich. The organization you work for is a victim, they told the executives — including the three men suspended this week — but you are potential culprits.

“In corporate prosecutions, there’s been enormous criticism of the Department of Justice for charging entities not individuals, and this is a flip of that,” said Antonia M. Apps, a lawyer with Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. “The confederations and FIFA are treated as victims rather than perpetrators. The indictment says these organizations had good goals and good purposes, and they were co-opted.”

Ms. Apps said it could have been possible for prosecutors to take a different approach and charge FIFA, Concacaf and Conmebol, the organization overseeing soccer in South America. Their nonprofit statuses were unlikely to affect a decision not to, she said. And, certainly, the soccer federations have been sued before — including in Florida State Court by two sports marketing companies that were separately charged by the United States for their roles in the corruption.

But the mission of FIFA and its members might have protected them from prosecution, Ms. Apps and other legal experts said. Their purpose — to regulate and promote soccer throughout the world — was not served by the alleged schemes in the way the bottom line of a bank or a carmaker might have benefited from employee crimes such as violating economic sanctions or failing to report a vehicle safety defect to regulators.

“It’s not a bank, it’s the game of soccer, and its purpose isn’t to maximize profit to stakeholders,” said Serina Vash, executive director of the program on corporate compliance and enforcement at New York University’s law school and a former federal prosecutor in New Jersey. “In order to get the international cooperation the U.S. wanted and needed, they had to focus on individual defendants.”

The people implicated in the case are said to have sought personal gain at the expense of world soccer, violating their duties to act in the interest of FIFA and its confederations. “The government basically says that the Chuck Blazers and Jack Warners of the world acted in a way that deprived the entities of their honest services,” Ms. Apps said, referring to two former Concacaf officials who sat on FIFA’s executive committee.

Made up of six regional confederations with 209 national federations among them, FIFA is a far-reaching conglomerate, which, had it been charged, could have made the United States’ case harder to prove, Ms. Vash said. “The indictment is very carefully crafted to assure it will withstand judicial scrutiny,” she said.

It could have been tougher to argue, for example, that Concacaf’s 41 members — including soccer federations from Anguilla to the United States — should be responsible for the actions of their parent association’s leadership. “It’s a little more complex than a straight corporation,” Ms. Vash said.

Still, national federations with simpler links to the alleged schemes — like Venezuela, whose federation’s president of 27 years was charged — have similarly not been charged, and are also seen as damaged parties.

“The government structured the indictment in a way that’s not just legally necessary but more palatable to other countries,” said Marc A. Agnifilo, a lawyer with Brafman & Associates and a former federal prosecutor in New Jersey.

To make the bribery allegations it did, the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which brought the case, had to make FIFA and its members victims, Mr. Agnifilo said.

Bribery not involving public officials is not illegal at the federal level in the United States, and state laws governing it are patchy. In New York, commercial bribery is a crime only if it goes against the interests of an employer. “If FIFA is bad, too — if it wasn’t harmed — then you don’t have a bribe under New York State law,” Mr. Agnifilo said. “You have racketeering charges, wire fraud and money laundering charges, but, at the end of the day, the essence of the wrongdoing here is bribery.”

Even had the United States wanted to bring a case against FIFA and its confederations, Ms. Apps said, there might have been skepticism about what kind of impact criminal charges could have on the autonomous international organization. A bank could be prevented from conducting certain business, potentially crippling it. “If FIFA is indicted, what are you going to prevent it from doing?” she said.

Imposing financial penalties would have taken money from the organization’s mission and would have been unlikely to win critical support from countries like Switzerland, which arrested half of the defendants in Zurich, held them in jail and was ruling on requests for their extradition.

“Countries of the world don’t want to see the United States destroy FIFA,” Mr. Agnifilo said. “I think the United States is trying to save FIFA from itself.”

But how exactly to disentangle an entity from the people who run it is a complicated question. The United States’ recent pattern — one Ms. Lynch pledged to change in her first major policy announcement as attorney general in September — has been to prosecute corporations but not the individuals behind them, and few executives involved in the housing and financial crises were punished.

While unique, the FIFA case may speak to policy changes, though the charges were filed months before Ms. Lynch’s announcement. “It’s an interesting position, to say this organization’s been robbed of honest services by these people who worked for it,” Ms. Vash said. “It makes you wonder how that narrative could be looked at by future corporations under investigation.”

It is worth noting that in the United States’ continuing investigation of FIFA, Ms. Lynch has said she expected new charges against not just individuals but entities — possibly referring to soccer federations but, more likely at this stage, legal experts said, companies that might have paid bribes to soccer officials to win business contracts.

Three South American media and marketing firms named in the United States indictment have not been charged, though their executives have been; two other companies, Traffic Sports USA and Traffic Sports International, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in May and, along with their owner, await sentencing next year.

Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president, and his right-hand man, Jérôme Valcke, were among the men provisionally suspended on Thursday, while the organization investigates allegations against them. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

But FIFA is not alone in scrutinizing their records. Last month, Swiss investigators, who are cooperating with the United States, said they had opened a criminal inquiry into Mr. Blatter, raising new questions about how high up within the organization the alleged schemes climbed. In the United States, experts said, such an inquiry would not have been announced publicly.

“Organizations only act through their people, so it’s a brainteaser,” Ms. Apps said. “If this goes as high as Sepp Blatter, what will they do?” she said, referring to United States prosecutors. “If everyone in an organization is corrupt, what’s left of the entity?”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Sees FIFA as Victim and Its Leaders as Wrongdoers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe